The new Sunday edition of Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper sold 3.26 million copies when it debuted in the UK yesterday, according to the News Corp chief’s Twitter feed. Yet the most interesting new development involving the tabloid is a charge today that came from Sue Akers, the deputy police commissioner overseeing investigations into alleged illegal practices by journalists. Akers told the Leveson Inquiry into UK media ethics that there “appears to have been a culture at The Sun of illegal payments” to police officers as well as members of the military, the government and other public organizations. (The Sun is controlled by the News Corp-owned News International.) According to The Guardian, Akers suggested there was a “network of corrupted officials” that journalists at The Sun could call upon and that one official received more than $126,500 (£80,000) over several years. Following Akers’ testimony, Murdoch gave the following statement: “She said the evidence suggested such payments were authorised by senior staff at The Sun. As I’ve made very clear, we have vowed to do everything we can to get to the bottom of prior wrongdoings in order to set us on the right path for the future. That process is well under way. The practices Sue Akers described at the Leveson inquiry are ones of the past, and no longer exist at The Sun. We have already emerged a stronger company.”

In related news, a News International email read at the inquiry suggests that Scotland Yard warned officials at Murdoch-owned papers as far back as 2006 that phone hacking had taken place at the News Of The World — but was limited to one reporter, royals editor Clive Goodman. The information came in an email seen by Andy Coulson, who at the time edited the tabloid, and Rebbekah Brooks, who then ran The Sun. Separately, it was disclosed that singer Charlotte Church will receive $950,000 (£600,000) from News International following last week’s settlement of her phone-hacking suit against the company. It was disclosed that private detective Glenn Mulcaire, who worked for NOTW, had the U.S. phone numbers of her agent and publicist among his notes. The presence of those numbers could make it harder to contain further lawsuits to Britain.

3 Comments

Graham Hill • on Feb 27, 2012 11:32 am

Some inquiry… its real news to discover that Murdoch’s papers operate by deceit, blackmail and spying!

The police are always out of the loop, because the British establishment, that is Rothschilds establishment, has always relied on such friends as Rupert Murdoch to do their bidding. Under new so-called anti-terrorist laws about to be enacted, all phone, e-mails and texts will be recorded and held by the “Security Services”. MI-6 in particular, is the most aggressive in making sure no one indicts Murdoch for anything!

777 • on Feb 27, 2012 11:32 am

I meant to say they’re NOT murderers and have NOT sinned in GOD ‘s laws….they’re just trying to make a living writing tabloids, gossip! Their only crime was being stupid! It’s not enough to prosecute people because they’re stupid! Peace to everyone!

Mark • on Feb 27, 2012 11:32 am

A culture can’t thrive without a personality or a system (probably both) enabling it to do so because a protocol of oversight is accidentally even purposely not in place. Look at what happened in the Catholic Church and with Jerry Sandusky while people looked the other way. You can’t look at the stories that “News of the World” covered (and for years) and not believe that there wasn’t some kind of live wire within (whatever that is; how many disparate factions or persons or levels it adds up to) jump starting the ongoing visibility/marketing of the results of such efforts. The reporters who participated in these things were a.) completely stupid to believe that it would go on forever; (b.) weren’t much of reporters if they were so ignorant of historical events of the latter part of the twentieth century; and (c.) probably felt emboldened implicitly by the hubris of the worldwide conglomerate giving them a false sense of empowerment by “the great Oz.” A good question would be how many of these writers had genuine education and training as journalists. I realize it involves “Fleet Street” but “The Front Page” image of reporters…was originally produced on Broadway a year before the crash of 1929. Cast any profession in a genuine democracy with a total lack of accountability and you’ll be romanticizing it at your peril in this day and age. Sooner or later.